The great Tory rebellion on PR - Cameron's troops tell him: Join fight to save old system

David Cameron faces a showdown with Tory MPs furious at his decision to give the green light for a referendum about ending Britain’s traditional electoral system.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg will announce on Tuesday that the vote on changing from ‘first past the post’ to the alternative vote (AV) system will take place on May 5 next year, the day that voters in Scotland and Wales go to the polls.

Tory backbenchers will demand that the Prime Minister plays an active role in the ‘No’ campaign and insist that the Conservative Party helps fund their fight to keep first past the post.

Electoral reform rivalry: David Cameron and Nick Clegg at the Spectator summer party last night

Yesterday they accused him of caving in to Mr Clegg’s demands for an early referendum on electoral reform to placate Lib Dem anger over the VAT rise in the Budget.

Tory rebels threatened to vote against the forthcoming referendum Bill or amend it to change the date of the poll.

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Former minister Bernard Jenkin warned that holding the vote on the same day as the Scottish and Welsh elections was a bid to help the Lib Dems win the referendum as
both countries already have a form
of proportional representation.

Mr Jenkin has been selected as a
spokesman for irate backbenchers
when they meet Mr Cameron next
Wednesday.

One member of the backbench
1922 Committee said: ‘We will be
pushing for a clear statement of
where Mr Cameron stands, because
it is far from clear. And we want Central
Office to provide funding for the
campaign.’

Under the AV system, voters list
the candidates in order of preference.

Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski,
chairman of the all-party parliamentary
group on the promotion of first past the post, dismissed AV as the
concern of a ‘Liberal elite’.

Asked if he thought David
Cameron would support a No vote,
Mr Kawczynski said: ‘I would love
him to campaign alongside us.’

Downing Street said that Mr
Cameron would make clear his support
for the No campaign. But the
Mail has learned that he is likely to
make just one speech at the start of
the campaign and then fade into the
background.

A senior Government source said:
‘He’s not going to give up his job and
spend his time on the road for the
No campaign. But probably quite
early on he’s going to have to give a
speech saying: “This is my position” otherwise he’s going to be asked
about it everywhere he goes.’

One Tory MP added: ‘I have
been told directly by Cameron’s
people that he will not play a visible
role in the campaign.’

Tory chief whip Patrick
McLoughlin has been inundated
with demands from MPs that they
be allowed to abstain or vote
against the Bill, as the Lib Dems
will be permitted to do on issues
like Tory plans for a marriage tax
break.

Most Tory rebels acknowledge
that they will ultimately vote for a
referendum since it was part of
the coalition agreement, but they
will seek to amend the details when the Bill goes through the
Commons.

They will try to insert a threshold
into the Bill, so the electoral
system does not change unless AV
gets a 60 per cent Yes vote.

The
moves will cause civil war within
the coalition, because the Liberal
Democrats are insistent on a simple
majority and a vote on May 5.

Tory MP Eleanor Laing said: ‘I
understand why we have to have a
referendum as it was part of the
coalition agreement, which is fair
enough.

‘But we have not even started to
discuss the terms of the referendum,
the date and the all important
issue of thresholds, which are
normal in a referendum on constitutional
matters.’

Tory MPs will also insist that the
referendum Bill spells out that no
general election could be fought
under the AV system unless a
boundary review to redraw constituency
borders has also been
completed.

This complicated and controversial
process – designed to stamp
out a Labour bias in the electoral
system – could take three years.

That will prevent the Lib Dems
winning an AV referendum and
then pulling out of the coalition
and sparking a new election.

But the coupling of the two
issues raised the prospect that a
combination of Labour MPs and
Tory rebels could join forces to
change the date of the referendum.

Shadow justice secretary Jack
Straw condemned the way the referendum
was being bundled up
with ‘wholly partisan’ plans to
reduce the number of MPs in a way that ‘discriminates against
the Labour Party’.

Labour leadership candidate Ed
Balls said: ‘I would campaign for
a change to AV in a fair referendum,
but constitutional reform
must be done in a proper and fair
way and I am concerned about the
cynical way in which the Tories
and Lib Dems are going about
this.

‘They seem to be tying into the
referendum to the gerrymandering
of our constituencies which
the Tories are cynically determined
to push through before the
next election.’

AV? Well the Fijians use it (sometimes)

ANALYSIS by ANTHONY KING

Keeping the coalition alive: Nick Clegg and David Cameron

The alternative vote is nothing
if not exotic. Among the
world’s established
democracies, only Australia
uses it for elections to its
equivalent of the House of Commons.

Otherwise it crops up in Fiji,
Papua New Guinea, some towns in
the U.S. and New Zealand and in
elections to the Canadian Wheat
Board.

Its principal attraction for those
who favour it is that winning candidates
have to secure more than
50 per cent of the votes in their
constituency.

In the general election last May,
only a third of the 650 MPs
elected won an absolute majority
in their constituency, the lowest
in British history.

No fewer than
66 per cent of MPs were elected
on a minority vote. Nine won with
less than 35 per cent.

So a clear majority of voters
across the UK voted for a candidate
who failed to win.

Its supporters say AV would be
fairer, but anyone who claims to
know how it would work out in
practice in the UK is a false
prophet – or, at best, a lucky one.

Everything depends on how
many candidates succeed in winning
more than 50 per cent of the
vote outright and – in those constituencies
where that does not
happen – how those who have not
voted for the top placed-candidate
distribute their other preferences.

The outcome in those
constituencies can resemble a
lottery.
Following the May election, the
Electoral Reform Society had a
shot at guessing what the UK-wide
outcome of that election
would have been had it been
fought on AV.

The society knew
from the results how people had
voted for their first-preference
candidates. Using opinion poll
data, they estimated how voters
would have distributed their second
preferences.

On this basis, the election’s outcome
would have been quite different
from what it was, not least
because, whereas 140 Labour MPs
won outright in May, only 55
Tories did so.

The count among
the victorious Lib Dems was even
smaller. Only 16 of their 52 MPs
won absolute majorities.

The Electoral Reform Society
calculated that in an AV election
in May, the Conservatives would
have won 281 seats (down 26 from
their actual 307). Labour would
have won 262 (up four from their
258) and the Lib Dems 79 (up 22
from their actual 57).

On that scenario,
the Lib Dems could have
installed Labour as well as the
Tories in power.

In other words,
the Lib Dems would actually have
‘held the balance of power’.

But, as the Electoral Reform
Society would concede,
there is no reason to think
that people’s preferences would
be the same under an new system
as they would under our traditional
one.

Suppose large numbers of people
had believed last May that, if
they gave their second preferences
to the Lib Dems, and if more
Lib Dem MPs were therefore likely
to be elected as a consequence,
the outcome might be the return
of a Labour government under
Gordon Brown.

That frightening
possibility might, by itself, have
changed their preferences.
Going back to 1983, the Conservatives
under Margaret Thatcher –
given the prevailing hostility to
Labour under Michael Foot –
might well have won an even
more thunderous victory under
AV than they did in reality.

AV may
or may not be desirable, but it
is far from being necessarily
anti-Tory.

Q & A

WHAT WILL THE
GOVERNMENT ANNOUNCE
NEXT WEEK?
That there will be a
referendum on May 5 next
year on replacing Britain’s first
past the post electoral system
with the alternative vote (AV).
Deputy Prime Minister Nick
Clegg will also launch a
boundary review of
constituencies to ensure that
they are all the same size and
votes count equally
throughout the UK.

WHAT IS ALTERNATIVE
VOTE?
Instead of selecting just one
candidate from the list, voters
would rank their preferences
in order – 1, 2, 3 etc. Initially,
only the first preferences are
counted and if any candidate
has secured more than 50 per
cent of the vote, he or she is
elected MP for that
constituency. If not, the
candidate with the fewest
votes is eliminated and second
choices for that candidate
added to the tallies of the
survivors where appropriate.
This process is repeated until
one candidate reaches the 50
per cent mark.

WHY HAVE A BOUNDARY
REVIEW AS WELL?
The Tories complain that the
system is currently biased
towards Labour. It takes far
fewer votes to elect a Labour
MP than a Conservative. The
electorates in English inner
cities, and large areas of
Scotland and Wales – all Labour
strongholds – are particularly
over-represented in
Parliament, and Tory rural
constituencies underrepresented.

CAN THE AV SYSTEM COME
IN BEFORE THE BOUNDARY
REVIEW IS COMPLETE?Downing Street insists that the
two must take place in parallel,
so that if the Lib Dems win the
referendum they would not be
able to walk away from the
coalition until the Tories get
the benefit of the boundary
changes. Tory MPs say the
Bill must spell out that no
general election could be
fought under AV until the
boundary review is
finished.

WHAT HAPPENS
NEXT?
The Government
will publish a Bill to approve
the referendum and the
boundary review, which will
have to pass the Commons
and the Lords.

HOW WILL THE
REFERENDUM BE WORDED?
That has yet to be decided. The
Government can set the
wording of a referendum,
according to guidelines
published by the Electoral
Commission, which calls for
the avoidance of jargon or
technical, ambiguous and
misleading terms.

WILL THE REFERENDUM
BILL BE WHIPPED IN
PARLIAMENT?
Yes. Tory and Lib Dem MPs
have been told they must back
the referendum taking place
but will then be free to
campaign for either a Yes or
No vote when it is held. Tory
rebels might seek to change
the date of the referendum,
set a 60 per cent threshold for
a Yes vote to change the
electoral system or the
wording of the question.

WHO’LL BE CAMPAIGNING
FOR AND AGAINST?
Nick Clegg will be cheerleader
for the Yes vote. David
Cameron will be against but
apart from a speech at the
beginning of the campaign, he
is expected to take a back
seat. Labour leadership
candidates David Miliband,
pictured, his brother Ed and
Ed Balls will back the Yes
campaign. Andy Burnham
supports first past the post.
But Labour will split and many
supporters of AV may oppose
the Bill – they do not like the
attempt to equalise the size of
constituencies because they
think it will cost Labour seats.

WHAT WILL BE THE COST
OF THIS EXERCISE?
An estimated £80million. The
two main campaign groups
are also likely to get public
money, overseen by the
Electoral Commission. Both
groups will get public funds
of up to £600,000, free
mailing of referendum
literature and free air
time for referendum
campaign broadcasts.
Political parties will
be limited to
spending £5million.

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Clegg wins battle over voting reform: Referendum on PR is expected on May 5